


Doegred

by Mythopoeia



Category: The Silmarillion and other histories of Middle-Earth - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-10-21
Updated: 2015-10-22
Packaged: 2018-04-27 09:40:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,355
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5043358
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mythopoeia/pseuds/Mythopoeia
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A collection of brief conversations between cousins. Some injuries heal more easily than others.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This is not so much a chapter story as a series of very short stories exploring a singular theme: namely, how Fingon and Maedhros process their various traumas in the aftermath of Thangorodrim. A note on the title: I have always loved that Maedhros' Old English name means "Daybreak." As Fingon and Maedhros both underwent terrible experiences and have to struggle towards recovery together, this gave me an excuse to give it a cameo in the title for this collection.

“Findekáno?”

It is the first time Russandol has called him by name since—since the cliff. Findekáno, caught just as he began to rise from his seat, looks with startled eyes down to the bed where his cousin had, until now, been sleeping.

 _Sleeping_ is perhaps too kind a word for it. But Findekáno does not have words, yet, for most anything to do with his cousin these last weeks.

“Yes, Russandol,” he says, as gently as he can. “I am here.”

“How came you here?”

“We flew,” Findekano says. He remembers the experience as being very cold, and he remembers it had been hard to breathe, so swift was the rush of Thorondor’s speed through the high airs. He had curled down as low as he dared over Russandol’s body, shaking, clinging with frozen fingers to the eagle’s long, slippery feathers as he braced with stiff arms to keep his cousin from falling. The god-eagle’s feathers had shone like gold between his bloodied fingers, great shining handfuls of gold. They had smelled like home. He had cried.

Irissë has not spoken to him since he returned except to say that she is envious that he got to fly.

“No,” Russandol rasps. “How came you. To Aman. How did—”

“Oh.”

The cold, the awful cold rises up between Findekáno’s teeth like it never left him, that hateful, familiar rigidity creeping into his throat, his shoulders, freezing and heavy upon his tongue. For a moment he is tempted to lie, or to deflect the question, but Nelyafinwë is, after all, Feanáro’s son. He deserves to know.

“We walked the Ice. All of us, except Arafinwë. We walked for years.”

Maitimo’s eyes used to be only one of his many beauties. Now, they are the only loveliness he has left. Findekáno meets their grey gaze and wonders, not for the first time, why Morgoth did not cut them out. He does not even feel sick, thinking of it. He has been through too much for that.

“I am sorry.”

Findekáno does not even laugh at the apology. He just sits there, his hand on the edge of the bed, staring at his cousin. Maitimo’s voice is wrecked. His lips are torn to pieces. There is a scar, across the broken bridge of his nose, that looks almost like a second mouth, a twisted, bitter smile that never goes away.

“Findekáno.”

It takes him a long while to stammer out each syllable, but still he says the full name.

“I am. I am sorry.”

(Itarildë had cried their entire first hour on the Ice, but when her tears froze and they had to thrust her face close to a torch to thaw them, tearing out half her eyelashes in the frantic race to save her eyes, she learned never to cry again. Findekáno himself would have lost his fingers to frostbite if Artanis had not realized what was happening in time to save them. The first time he cut off a man’s hand was not on the cruel slopes of Thangorodrim—it was on the Ice, sawing through dead black flesh and crystalized blood and trying desperately not to be sick. The man died anyway.)

(So many died anyway.)

Russandol whispers: “It must have been terrible.”

Turukáno would have screamed at him. Artanis would have hit him. Findekáno swallows it down, that endless, endless cold, looking at his cousin’s ruined face. At his own hand resting on the bedspread where Maitimo’s right hand should have been.

“It was,” he says at last. “But it is over, now.”


	2. Chapter 2

The first time Russandol tries to thank him for his rescue, it is like a pit opens up in Findekáno’s stomach. He shakes his head, the fingers of his bow hand trembling slightly. They do that, now and then, ever since Thangorodrim. He flexes his empty fingers stubbornly, willing them steady.

"It was not me who saved you. It was Manwë."

"Manwë was not there to cut me free from the mountain," Russandol says lightly, but there is no humor in his eyes. Findekano shakes his head again, and kneels down upon the grass beside his cousin. Russandol is breathing harder than a ten-minute walk on level ground should merit, but it is still improvement from a week ago.

"Maybe not, but it was his eagle who came. I would have killed you, else. I prayed that I could kill you swiftly, and I would have killed you, but then the eagle came."

"Ah, you see? You prayed, and the eagle came. Never in all my time there did any eagle come for me. It came for you."

"Did you ask for the Valar's help?"

"No." A shadow came over his face. "I . . . I was too ashamed. To ask. The only thing I ever prayed to in those years was Morgoth. And he did not hear me, either. Or, well, that is not true. I prayed to you, when I asked you to kill me."

“Blasphemy, cousin,” Findekáno chides mildly, but he is not really angry. Russandol does not look at him. He is staring down at his knees like a child confessing to its parent.

"I thought it the Doom come for me in my turn. I have killed my kin. We set foot on this land and that first night my father said we would burn the ships. I stood aside and did nothing. I thought that meant my hands were clean. Macalaurë, Atarinkë, all of them helped but I did not. I saw, looking down at the burning, that Ambarto was missing. I thought it meant he stood aside as I did. But after the ships were well and truly ablaze we realized he was not anywhere. He burned to death on the ships. 

"Then my father died, so soon after, and we were left not even his body to bury. And when I went to the parley and saw the flaming swords I thought: here is my turn. And they took me and--they--I thought it was my punishment. My father died, and my littlest brother died, and we were all being eaten up by the curse one by one. I thought it was the Valar's _will_ , that I be tormented by Morgoth, just as it must have been their will that my littlest brother perish in fire on the ships. I was too frightened to ask for forgiveness. I told myself, at first, that I deserved it. All of it. That the Valar were punishing me and that their punishment was just."

His mouth twisted horribly. 

"But I didn't deserve it, did I, Findekáno?"

Findekáno does not even think; he reaches out and sets his hand on his cousin’s bowed shoulder. He means it to be comforting, and remembers too late how Russandol now hates to be touched without warning. 

Russandol does not flinch away, but his breath catches in his throat and Findekáno snatches his fingers back as though burned.

“No,” he says, and he wants to shake his cousin, to force him to look in his eyes and read the ferocity of his conviction there, but he doesn’t. It takes everything he has in him, but he doesn’t.

"Russandol, listen to me. I do not know anything but a small part of what you endured, but even so, I know--I know you did not deserve that. No creature of Eru’s make deserved that."

After a long moment, Findekáno begins to fear his cousin did not hear him—that his touch had locked him back in some dark memory like he had so often struggled with, in the early days of his recovery, and that he can no longer hear or see anything outside of his own mind. But then he takes a ragged gasp of air and his left hand rises up to rub shakily at his eyes. 

“Help me up,” he says. “I want to walk to the stream.”

“You are certain you can? It’s almost twice as long again as how far we’ve already come.”

Russandol nods and bites at his lip.

“Help me,” he says.

So Findekáno helps him.


End file.
